Movement of Salah al-Din the Kurd

The Movement of Salah al-Din the Kurd was a Salafi jihadist militant group in Syria which was founded in 2015 during the Syrian Civil War, named for the Ayyubid sultan Saladin. It was founded by Kurdish mujahideen from Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, many of whom had fought in the conflict since 2012. On 21 September 2015, the Kurdish fighters united to fight against the oppression of the Kurdish people and return them to their Islamic roots. Many members of the group were instructed by the jihadist cleric Abdul Razzaq al-Mahdi, and, while they regarded themselves as a Kurdish movement, they admitted that they were not as popular as the secular Syrian Democratic Forces. The group specialized in sniper and location tactics, and it primarily operated in Jabal al-Akrab and the al-Ghab Plain in northwestern Syria.